Apocalypse Beast Supplier: Only I Sell God-Tier Beasts

As soon as they located the river, Terrence didn’t waste any time. He stripped off his upper clothes and dumped himself straight into the cool, flowing water.

The cold water bit sharp into his exposed skin, a sudden chill following that made him shiver a bit.

Despite the harsh temperature, he could be seen smiling without a care in the world—looking as if he hadn’t just barely escaped a terrifying near-death experience moments prior.

”Noir, I really must commend you. You were getting faster and faster out there,” Terrence said warmly, his praise making Noir puff out its chest in obvious pride.

”I really ought to reward you properly for that, but I don’t have anything good on me at the moment.”

Noir let out a soft bark in response, as if telling him not to worry about rewards at all—that its actions were born out of pure, unshakeable loyalty to him.

Terrence stared at the Shadow Hound, a warm smile spreading across his face as he reached out and gently rubbed its wet head.

”Thank you, buddy. You didn’t just save me once back there—you’ve saved me for the nth time now, but I will still thank you every single time.”

Terrence then looked up at Avery, gesturing for the small dragon to dip into the stream right next to him.

Avery didn’t complain in the slightest and followed his lead, plunging into the current and making the rushing water feel cold through them for a short time.

The soothing splash of the flowing water filled their ears as they took the precious moment to rest their battered bodies. And to be completely honest, the quiet retreat seemed to be working wonders.

Terrence actively refused to dwell on what had just happened in that other world. He knew there were plenty of deep mysteries he didn’t understand, but trying to uncover those hidden truths simply didn’t fit his practical character.

Terrence only cared about achieving his personal goals, and anything that didn’t align with them would only serve as an unwelcome distraction.

If a massive, world-ending threat truly emerged, he would participate in stopping it, but that didn’t mean he was going to work his ass off searching for trouble just to prevent it beforehand.

He let out a quiet sigh. For this brief moment, he was submerged in pure tranquility and peace, temporarily forgetting about the heavy burdens that worried him with every passing second.

”Say... if I had just been born into a completely normal family, would I be living a life like this? No constant worries about the dark, hidden face of my lineage. Just loved unconditionally within a warm, complete family. Maybe if things were normal, Lucas and I would still be okay, no?”

Terrence’s heart felt intensely heavy as the thought crossed his mind, and he couldn’t do anything to stop the aching pain in his chest.

Noticing his sudden drop in mood, Noir and Avery pushed themselves closer to Terrence’s side in the water, leaning their bodies against him as if trying to say he didn’t have to worry about those painful things anymore. After all, everything happened for a reason—be it for better or for worse.

As the noontime sun passed and his body finally felt refreshed, Terrence and his companions left the riverbank to head toward their second dungeon rift of the day.

It was another standard C-Rank dungeon located nearby. Following the precise navigation directions provided by the Contribution Agency, they easily reached the outer perimeter of the rift entrance.

This time, the scene at the site was quite different from his previous run. There was a bustling crowd of people and an official Rift Guard stationed at the portal, unlike the abandoned location from earlier. Terrence had his minor suspicions about the sudden security presence, but he didn’t waste time overthinking it.

After completing his mandatory registration at the checkpoint, he stepped directly into the shimmering portal, greeted by a sudden wave of pitch-black darkness before bright light flooded his vision.

The moment his sight cleared, the surrounding landscape turned out to be completely different from what he had expected.

While most dungeons usually consisted of ancient ruined castles or fantasy biomes filled with mutated flora, this environment felt unnervingly familiar to him.

”Isn’t this... a ruined human city?” Terrence asked himself in disbelief. Since he was the only tamer in his immediate line of sight at the entrance point, he didn’t have anyone else to direct the question to anyway.

Sprawled out before him were recognizable infrastructures—collapsed storefronts, broken concrete roads, and even the skeletal remains of an elementary school. Further down the cracked avenue sat a few residential houses constructed from familiar wood and cement.

But what caught his attention most of all were the shattered, rusted LED screens hanging off the storefront facades.

”This doesn’t feel like a standard dungeon at all. It feels more like a completely destroyed human city,” Terrence noted quietly, his mind instinctively recalling his terrifying encounter with the alien world inside the previous rift.

”This really doesn’t help my peace of mind at all... This just further solidifies my theory that these dungeon rifts are actually just remnants of other worlds that were either completely destroyed or reconstructed.”

Furthermore, as he recalled the frantic rants he had heard from that long-eared human during their fight, Terrence couldn’t help but gain a chilling inkling of what the true nature of reality might be.

Were there countless different worlds existing out there, all forced into a desperate cosmic survival where they had no choice but to fight and destroy one another?

Whatever the overarching reason behind this system was, something catastrophic was definitely approaching—an event that would bring about the end of their world, just like how tamers were forced to clear out these collapsing dungeon rifts.

”Grrr...!”

Noir suddenly growled a sharp warning.

Terrence reflexively tilted his body hard to the side just as a blurry, high-speed projectile whizzed past his head. He immediately traced the trajectory back to its source and spotted a massive army of Dark Orcs emerging from the ruined buildings up ahead.

Scanning their tough, dark skin, brutal humanoid features, and grotesque, monster-like expressions, Terrence found himself wondering even more about the long-eared human’s true identity and role in all this.

However, faced with an immediate physical threat standing right in front of them, Terrence had to put those distracting thoughts aside, finish this battle as quickly as possible, and harvest their valuable beast cores.

Issuing precise, calm commands to coordinate their actions, Terrence utilized the growing synergy between his contracted beasts to completely erase the entire battalion of twenty Dark Orcs from the face of this dungeon rift.

By the time the chaotic battle settled, Terrence’s hands were covered in the slimy, dark green blood of the slaughtered monsters. But the mess didn’t bother him in the slightest—he had gotten exactly what he came here for.

Beast cores.

With a fresh batch of C-Rank beast cores secured, significant evolutionary progress could be expected for his S-Rank Mutated Iron Shadow Hound.

”This haul should be pretty good for us...” Terrence muttered to himself, carefully wiping his bloody hands on a discarded rag.

”Hey!”

Terrence was abruptly snapped out of his clouded thoughts as a sharp, familiar voice called out to him from a distance.

Instinctively turning his head toward the sound, his eyes widened slightly as he spotted a familiar figure jogging over through the urban rubble.

”Winter?”